http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53L1sP73qq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4ZgyAU0cw
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Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. Isaiah 56: 12
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http://youtu.be/j6_pZK_gqxk
NINHARSAG NEGOTIATES HER SON NINURTA TO SUCCEED TO EARTH’S RULE IN EXCHANGE FOR MARDUK’S LIFE
Ninharsag brought her feuding brothers, Enki and Enlil into the confrontation between Sarpanit and Inanna. Ninharsag proposed exiling Marduk and appointing Ninurta, her son with Enlil, in Marduk’s place as successor to the rule of Earth. Enlil awarded Egypt to Thoth, but Inanna objected.
Egypt, said Inanna, should be hers. “To the heritage of Dumuzi, her deceased bridegroom, did Inanna lay claim. A dominion of her own she of Enki and Enlil demanded” [ Sitchin, Z.,The Lost Book of Enki, 2002:259].
Enki Speaks - 3
http://data2.whicdn.com/images/88345176/large.jpg
I often reflect that we should be worshipping our Earth's Magnetosphere, which acts as our ultimate protective Mother - keeping out what we don't need, while allowing in what we do. This report from NASA gives an idea of the pervading subtle responsive intelligence that lies "beneath the curtain of each atom" and is the ultimate source cause of all universes.
NASA excerpts: Earth is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere. As it travels through space, a complex system of charged particles from the sun and magnetic structures piles up in front of it. Scientists wish to better understand this area in front of the bow shock, known as the foreshock, as it can help explain how energy from the rest of space makes its way past this boundary into the magnetosphere.
As Earth moves around the sun, it travels surrounded by a giant bubble created by its own magnetic fields, called the magnetosphere. As the magnetosphere plows through space, it sets up a standing bow wave or bow shock, much like that in front of a moving ship. Just in front of this bow wave lies a complex, turbulent system called the foreshock. Conditions in the foreshock change in response to solar particles streaming in from the sun, moving magnetic fields and a host of waves, some fast, some slow, sweeping through the region. ...
"...a special kind of magnetic pulsations called short large amplitude magnetic structures, which we call SLAMS for short.?
SLAMS are waves with a single, large peak, a little like giant rogue waves that can develop in the deep ocean. By studying the region around the SLAMS and how they propagate, the Wind data showed SLAMS may provide an improved explanation for what accelerates narrow jets of charged particles back out into space, away from Earth. ...
The material pervading this area of space ? indeed all outer space ? is known as plasma. Plasma is much like a gas, but each particle is electrically charged so movement is governed as much by the laws of electromagnetics as it is by the fundamental laws of gravity and motion we more regularly experience on Earth.
...the SLAMS create a kind of magnetic mirror, causing the solar particles to reflect, attenuating them into one of these field-aligned ion beams, shooting out along magnetic fields back out and away from Earth.
Awe inspiring large image & full report here:
NASA - NASA?s Wind Mission Encounters ?SLAMS? Waves
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Piles of Midwest 'petcoke' raising residents' ire - SFGate
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Piles of Midwest 'petcoke' raising residents' ire - SFGate
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"I had just put the casket in the hearse,
and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me.
I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?'
She replied, 'Daddy, it's me ...
"Art arises where the arbitrary and the predictable are superseded by unpredictable inevitability"
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https://www.google.com/search?q=%27Roqueting+Through+Space%27&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs
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http://www.progressor.net/review/vafdm_2011.html
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Fidel Castro shares at least one belief with the majority of Americans: He is convinced that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not the work of a lone gunman, but rather the culmination of a broad conspiracy. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in Dallas 50 years ago.
But Castro suspects that Oswald might not have been involved in the assassination at all. He told me -- to my great surprise -- over lunch three years ago in Havana: “I have reached the conclusion that Oswald could not have been the one who killed Kennedy.” Castro is of course a confident man, but he said this with a degree of surety that was noteworthy.
Jeffrey Goldberg
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I was visiting Cuba at Castro’s invitation. I had just written a cover story for the Atlantic about Israel’s threat to strike Iran's nuclear facilities militarily. Castro read the article and sent me a message through the Cuban Interest Section in Washington: He would like me to come to Cuba as soon as possible in order to discuss my findings with him. I obliged.
Kennedy was only a peripheral subject in our discussions. Castro was preoccupied by the threat of nuclear war and proliferation, as one would expect: He was one of the three key players in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that nearly brought about the destruction of the planet. John F. Kennedy was Castro's adversary; Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, was his patron.
At one point, I mentioned the letter he wrote to Khrushchev at the height of the crisis, in which he asked the Soviets to consider launching a nuclear strike against the U.S. if the Americans attacked Cuba. "That would be the time to think about liquidating such a danger forever through a legal right of self-defense," he wrote. In Havana, I asked him, “At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?"
He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all.” I expressed relief that Khrushchev ignored his request.
Castro was also deeply concerned about the level of anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating from Tehran and wanted to communicate his displeasure to then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, through an intermediary. (I wrote about Fidel’s views of Iran and Israel here.)
I brought Julia Sweig -- a friend and a pre-eminent expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations -- with me on the trip. We wound up spending the better part of a week with Castro. (You can read about our journey to watch a dolphin show at the Havana aquarium with Castro and Che Guevara’s daughter here.) By the time of our meetings, Castro was recovering from a serious illness and already semi-retired. His brother Raul was running the country, although I was under the clear impression that nothing important happened in Havana without Fidel's assent.
One afternoon, after a marathon interview session, we gathered for lunch -- Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, a couple of aides, Julia, a translator and myself -- and an expansive Castro told stories of the early days of the revolution, and entertained a series of random questions from us. I knew, from Julia, who has studied Castro for years, that JFK was seldom too far from his thoughts, but our discussion of U.S. policy actually began with other presidents. Castro spoke of a biography of Abraham Lincoln he had just read.
“Is Lincoln the most interesting American to you?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “but much more than Washington.”
“Much more than Kennedy?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but unconvincingly. “Kennedy made many mistakes. He was young and dramatic.” Castro reserved his animus mainly for Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general in his brother’s administration and loathed Castro and his revolution. It was Robert, Castro believes, who was behind U.S. plots to have him assassinated. But he blames JFK for the invasion of the Bay of Pigs by a ragtag Cuban exile army: “Kennedy was humiliated by his defeat at the Bay of Pigs, but all that we did was to protect ourselves.”
Then Castro began talking about JFK’s assassination. “It is a very sad story,” he said. “It was a very sad day when it happened.” He remembered the moment he heard of the shooting. “I won’t forget it. As soon as we heard, we all rushed to the radio to listen.”
Self-preservation was on the Cuban leader's mind in the days after the assassination. He understood that he would be blamed for JFK’s death, especially after it was learned that Oswald had vociferously opposed American policy toward Castro’s Cuba. Castro tried hard to communicate to the Americans that he had nothing to do with JFK's death.
As Philip Shenon reports in his new book, "A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination," Castro even arranged to be interviewed by a Warren Commission staffer on a yacht off Cuba. “Immediately after the assassination, Castro very justifiably worried that he would be blamed, and he was worried that if he were blamed, there would be an American invasion of Cuba,” Shenon told me. But Castro’s denials were credible. Despite the many arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists, he said, “There is no credible evidence that Castro was involved personally in ordering the assassination.”
Whether Castro’s agents or sympathizers encouraged Oswald, on a visit to Mexico, to assassinate JFK is another question, one that Shenon explores in his book. “My question is whether people thinking that they were acting in Castro’s best interest might have provided the motivation,” he said. The second question: Whether Oswald believed that killing Kennedy was what Fidel Castro wanted him to do. “In September of 1963, Castro gives an interview to the AP in Havana in which he seems to suggest that Kennedy’s life is at risk: ‘I know the Americans are trying to kill me and if this continues there will be retribution,’ was the message. This report runs in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and Oswald reads the Times-Picayune avidly. Perhaps Oswald said, ‘Ah ha, I’m going to kill Kennedy.’ ”
This is what might be called the Jodie Foster theory of the Kennedy assassination: Oswald sought to demonstrate his loyalty to the man he admired above all others, Fidel Castro, by killing the president.
Castro told us at lunch -- as he would -- that none of his associates or officials had anything to do with the assassination and that the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, which Oswald had visited, denied him permission to visit Cuba, fearing he was a provocateur.
I asked Castro why he thought Oswald could not have acted alone. He proceeded to tell the table a long and discursive story about an experiment he staged, after the assassination, to see if it were possible for a sniper to shoot Kennedy in the manner the assassination was alleged to have happened. “We had trained our people in the mountains during the war” -- the Cuban revolution -- “on these kind of telescopic sites. So we knew about this kind of shooting. We tried to recreate the circumstances of this shooting, but it wasn’t possible for one man to do. The news I had received is that one man killed Kennedy in his car with a rifle, but I deducted that this story was manufactured to fool people.”
Castro said his suspicions grew especially pronounced after Oswald was killed. “There was the story of Jack Ruby, who was said to be so moved by the death of Kennedy that he decided to shoot Oswald on his own. That was just unbelievable to us.”
I then asked Castro what he believed actually happened. I brought up his friend Oliver Stone, who suggested that it was the Central Intelligence Agency and a group of anti-Castro Cubans (I used the term “anti-you Cubans”) that plotted the assassination.
“Quite possibly,” he said. “This is quite possibly so. There were people in the American government who thought Kennedy was a traitor because he didn’t invade Cuba when he had the chance, when they were asking him. He was never forgiven for that.”
"So that’s what you think might have happened?"
“No doubt about it,” Castro answered.
We talked a bit more about Kennedy and his legacy. Castro told us about his subsequent contact with members of Kennedy’s family, including Maria Shriver. “She’s the one who married Schwarzenegger,” he said. “The world is a very small place.”
We turned to other subjects, but Castro came back to Kennedy once more, the next day, when he said to me, apropos of nothing, “Kennedy was very young.”
I later asked Julia what this might have meant. For Castro, who was a very old man, she said, Kennedy may forever stand for something out of reach. “He’ll never know what would have happened had JFK. lived. He may have reserved for Kennedy in his own mind the possibility of greatness. It’s completely fascinating and frustrating to him.”
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Fidel Castro shares at least one belief with the majority of Americans: He is convinced that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not the work of a lone gunman, but rather the culmination of a broad conspiracy. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in Dallas 50 years ago.
But Castro suspects that Oswald might not have been involved in the assassination at all. He told me -- to my great surprise -- over lunch three years ago in Havana: ?I have reached the conclusion that Oswald could not have been the one who killed Kennedy.? Castro is of course a confident man, but he said this with a degree of surety that was noteworthy.
Jeffrey Goldberg
About Jeffrey Goldberg?
Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the author of "Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror" ... MORE
FOLLOW ON TWITTER
More from Jeffrey Goldberg:
In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals
Q
Iran Is Playing Obama, Says Savvy Saudi Prince
Q
The Iranian Sanction Paradox
Q
I was visiting Cuba at Castro?s invitation. I had just written a cover story for the Atlantic about Israel?s threat to strike Iran's nuclear facilities militarily. Castro read the article and sent me a message through the Cuban Interest Section in Washington: He would like me to come to Cuba as soon as possible in order to discuss my findings with him. I obliged.
Kennedy was only a peripheral subject in our discussions. Castro was preoccupied by the threat of nuclear war and proliferation, as one would expect: He was one of the three key players in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that nearly brought about the destruction of the planet. John F. Kennedy was Castro's adversary; Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, was his patron.
At one point, I mentioned the letter he wrote to Khrushchev at the height of the crisis, in which he asked the Soviets to consider launching a nuclear strike against the U.S. if the Americans attacked Cuba. "That would be the time to think about liquidating such a danger forever through a legal right of self-defense," he wrote. In Havana, I asked him, ?At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?"
He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all.? I expressed relief that Khrushchev ignored his request.
Castro was also deeply concerned about the level of anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating from Tehran and wanted to communicate his displeasure to then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, through an intermediary. (I wrote about Fidel?s views of Iran and Israel here.)
I brought Julia Sweig -- a friend and a pre-eminent expert on Cuba at the Council on Foreign Relations -- with me on the trip. We wound up spending the better part of a week with Castro. (You can read about our journey to watch a dolphin show at the Havana aquarium with Castro and Che Guevara?s daughter here.) By the time of our meetings, Castro was recovering from a serious illness and already semi-retired. His brother Raul was running the country, although I was under the clear impression that nothing important happened in Havana without Fidel's assent.
One afternoon, after a marathon interview session, we gathered for lunch -- Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, a couple of aides, Julia, a translator and myself -- and an expansive Castro told stories of the early days of the revolution, and entertained a series of random questions from us. I knew, from Julia, who has studied Castro for years, that JFK was seldom too far from his thoughts, but our discussion of U.S. policy actually began with other presidents. Castro spoke of a biography of Abraham Lincoln he had just read.
?Is Lincoln the most interesting American to you?? I asked.
?No,? he said, ?but much more than Washington.?
?Much more than Kennedy?? I asked.
?Yes,? he said, but unconvincingly. ?Kennedy made many mistakes. He was young and dramatic.? Castro reserved his animus mainly for Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general in his brother?s administration and loathed Castro and his revolution. It was Robert, Castro believes, who was behind U.S. plots to have him assassinated. But he blames JFK for the invasion of the Bay of Pigs by a ragtag Cuban exile army: ?Kennedy was humiliated by his defeat at the Bay of Pigs, but all that we did was to protect ourselves.?
Then Castro began talking about JFK?s assassination. ?It is a very sad story,? he said. ?It was a very sad day when it happened.? He remembered the moment he heard of the shooting. ?I won?t forget it. As soon as we heard, we all rushed to the radio to listen.?
Self-preservation was on the Cuban leader's mind in the days after the assassination. He understood that he would be blamed for JFK?s death, especially after it was learned that Oswald had vociferously opposed American policy toward Castro?s Cuba. Castro tried hard to communicate to the Americans that he had nothing to do with JFK's death.
As Philip Shenon reports in his new book, "A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination," Castro even arranged to be interviewed by a Warren Commission staffer on a yacht off Cuba. ?Immediately after the assassination, Castro very justifiably worried that he would be blamed, and he was worried that if he were blamed, there would be an American invasion of Cuba,? Shenon told me. But Castro?s denials were credible. Despite the many arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists, he said, ?There is no credible evidence that Castro was involved personally in ordering the assassination.?
Whether Castro?s agents or sympathizers encouraged Oswald, on a visit to Mexico, to assassinate JFK is another question, one that Shenon explores in his book. ?My question is whether people thinking that they were acting in Castro?s best interest might have provided the motivation,? he said. The second question: Whether Oswald believed that killing Kennedy was what Fidel Castro wanted him to do. ?In September of 1963, Castro gives an interview to the AP in Havana in which he seems to suggest that Kennedy?s life is at risk: ?I know the Americans are trying to kill me and if this continues there will be retribution,? was the message. This report runs in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and Oswald reads the Times-Picayune avidly. Perhaps Oswald said, ?Ah ha, I?m going to kill Kennedy.? ?
This is what might be called the Jodie Foster theory of the Kennedy assassination: Oswald sought to demonstrate his loyalty to the man he admired above all others, Fidel Castro, by killing the president.
Castro told us at lunch -- as he would -- that none of his associates or officials had anything to do with the assassination and that the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, which Oswald had visited, denied him permission to visit Cuba, fearing he was a provocateur.
I asked Castro why he thought Oswald could not have acted alone. He proceeded to tell the table a long and discursive story about an experiment he staged, after the assassination, to see if it were possible for a sniper to shoot Kennedy in the manner the assassination was alleged to have happened. ?We had trained our people in the mountains during the war? -- the Cuban revolution -- ?on these kind of telescopic sites. So we knew about this kind of shooting. We tried to recreate the circumstances of this shooting, but it wasn?t possible for one man to do. The news I had received is that one man killed Kennedy in his car with a rifle, but I deducted that this story was manufactured to fool people.?
Castro said his suspicions grew especially pronounced after Oswald was killed. ?There was the story of Jack Ruby, who was said to be so moved by the death of Kennedy that he decided to shoot Oswald on his own. That was just unbelievable to us.?
I then asked Castro what he believed actually happened. I brought up his friend Oliver Stone, who suggested that it was the Central Intelligence Agency and a group of anti-Castro Cubans (I used the term ?anti-you Cubans?) that plotted the assassination.
?Quite possibly,? he said. ?This is quite possibly so. There were people in the American government who thought Kennedy was a traitor because he didn?t invade Cuba when he had the chance, when they were asking him. He was never forgiven for that.?
"So that?s what you think might have happened?"
?No doubt about it,? Castro answered.
We talked a bit more about Kennedy and his legacy. Castro told us about his subsequent contact with members of Kennedy?s family, including Maria Shriver. ?She?s the one who married Schwarzenegger,? he said. ?The world is a very small place.?
We turned to other subjects, but Castro came back to Kennedy once more, the next day, when he said to me, apropos of nothing, ?Kennedy was very young.?
I later asked Julia what this might have meant. For Castro, who was a very old man, she said, Kennedy may forever stand for something out of reach. ?He?ll never know what would have happened had JFK. lived. He may have reserved for Kennedy in his own mind the possibility of greatness. It?s completely fascinating and frustrating to him.?
Altec Lansing Microphone Acoustic Calibrator | eBay
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj8ApkHvOro
At least so far. On November 21, Ukraine abandoned an expected EU alliance. It did so in the interest of "national security," it said. It intends renewing "active dialogue" with Moscow.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton lied calling it a "disappointment for the people of Ukraine." Signing the pact "would have provided a unique opportunity," she claimed.
For the EU perhaps. Not for Ukraine. A November 28 Vilnius Eastern Partnership conference signing ceremony was planned. No longer.
Signing the deal would be disastrous for Ukraine. It dodged a bullet by refusing. It did so at the EU's expense. It did the right thing.
EU countries covet Eastern expansion. Doing so adversely affects Russian interests. It's disastrous for vulnerable populations.
Vladimir Putin accused EU officials of "blackmail(ing)" and "pressur(ing)" Ukraine to sign.
Doing so benefits EU countries at Ukraine's expense. It's economy is deeply troubled. Its natural markets are more East than West. It's It's true for other Eastern European countries.
EU aligned ones include Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
Their economies are largely troubled. Some are basket cases. EU officials want to co-opt Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Exploiting them for profit is planned. Ukraine's refusal disrupts things. Perhaps other targeted countries will reconsider.
At this time, Georgia and Moldova intend to sign on. It's in their best interests not to. It's their choice either way.
EU terms mandate structural adjustment harshness. So do IMF financial demands.
They include mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unrestricted free market access for EU corporations, corporate friendly tax cuts, marginalizing trade unionism, and harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers.
Ukrainian elements standing to gain from EU membership orchestrated mass protests.
Doing so was reminiscent of 2004 Orange Revolution disruption. Washington's dirty hands manipulated it. Ukrainians ended up losers.
President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned an EU alliance for good reason. Added social injustice could wreck his 2015 reelection chances. Current economic hard times caused widespread human misery.
Compounding it could cause explosive conditions. Politicians worry most about staying in office. Angering most people is no way to do it.
Ukraine is vitally important to Russia. Both countries maintain close economic ties. It's in their mutual interests to continue them.
Moscow supplies about 90% of Ukraine's gas. Its strategic location gives Russian vessels access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
Europe's economy is broken. Monetary intervention solved nothing. Core problems fester and grow. Effective solutions are absent.
Bankers are prioritized over sound economics. Western policy makers march to the same drummer.
Ordinary people suffer. Poverty, unemployment, and deprivation grow exponentially. Nothing ahead looks promising.
On June 4, Harvard Business Review contributor Bill Lee headlined "The European Union: A Failed Experiment."
"How long can this go on," he asked? Seventeen Eurozone countries represent its weakest link. More on that below.
Economic stagnation, longer term decline, high unemployment, growing poverty, deprivation, and political dysfunction characterize a failed system.
Lee quoted The Economist. It criticized EU leaders for "sleepwalking through an economic wasteland."
Europe is fast becoming an economic backwater. Human misery is extreme. "(T)ens of millions of Europeans who want work can't find it," said Lee.
Many face "desperate" conditions. Some poor Europeans sell internal organs for cash. A continental black market in body parts exists.
Half of new Greek HIV cases are self-inflicted. It's done to get 700 euros in monthly benefits. For how long remains to be seen. Desperate people do desperate things. According to Lee:
"(I)t's time to throw out the EU project itself. The whole thing, root and branch."
Policymakers aren't solving things. They're going from bad to worse. Economic decline is endemic. Force-fed austerity is counterproductive.
Unemployment keeps rising. It's at Depression era levels in some countries. It was last seen in the 1930s.
Youth unemployment is especially troubling. Young people across much of the continent have no futures.
EU officials mindlessly pursue failed policies. They're "convinced of (their) infallibility," said Lee. They believe human suffering is a small price to pay.
Democratic accountability is nonexistent. Bankers and other corporate favorites alone matter. "It's time to revisit the EU's founding principles," said Lee.
So-called lofty aims failed. Prosperity remains elusive. Social angst grows. So do political tensions.
"A system whose officials are responsible for the region's faltering economies but who are not accountable to the tens of millions of unemployed people in them, is obviously exacerbating those tensions rather than alleviating them," said Lee.
The prospects for effective EU integration "are slim to none," he added. EU officials muddle along destructively. They turn a blind eye to failure.
Eurozone rules don't work. Uniting 17 dissimilar countries under one size fits all diktats failed dismally.
Monetary union was doomed to fail. It was engineered fraudulently to look workable.
In 1979, Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was introduced as part of the European Monetary System (EMS). It's purpose was to propel the continent to one European currency unit (ECU).
ERM never worked. ECU is failing. Abandoning monetary and fiscal sovereignty reflects financial and economic madness.
Doing so means foregoing the right to devalue currencies to make exports more competitive, maintain money sovereignty to monetize debt freely, and legislate fiscal policy to stimulate growth.
The euro's 1999 introduction prevented the European Central Bank (ECB) from financing government deficits. Since Eurozone members can't monetize credit, they're dependent on commercial banks and bondholders.
Banking giants partnered with EU, ECB and IMF Troika power decide everything. Policies require lowered living standards, sacking public workers, and selling off state assets at fire sale prices.
It's win-win for bankers and other corporate predators. It's lose-lose for economies and most people in them. It's a dirty game. An eventual bad ending is certain.
Party time won't last forever. Expect end game times to arrive with a bang heard round the world.
Bailouts and other fixes buy time. They don't work longterm. Troubled Eurozone countries are drowning in debt. Adding more exacerbates bad conditions.
Rising unemployment means less purchasing power. When people have money in their pockets they spend it. Otherwise they conserve. They struggle just to get by.
Bernard Connolly is a British economist. He predicted the euro's failure. He did so before its introduction.
He called it a harebrained notion doomed to fail. Saying it cost him his job. Last February, he predicted much more pain ahead. Europe is slowly rotting away, he believes.
Conditions are "getting worse and worse," he said. Two immediate solutions aren't pleasant, he added.
Either Germany pays "something like 10% of (its) GDP a year, every year, forever" to crisis-hit countries, or crisis conditions too severe to control get Greek and/or other most troubled Eurozone populations to say:"
" 'We'll chuck the whole lot of you out.' Now that's not a very pleasant prospect." Not when accompanied by mass social disruption. It's what revolutions are made of.
Connolly is no ordinary doomsayer. He formerly headed the European Monetary System. He was a Committee of Central Bank Governors Foreign Exchange Policy Subcommittee member.
He was an OECD monetary affairs expert. He's now an independent consultant. He heads Connolly Insight LP.
He's considered the foremost European economic, monetary, and political integration expert.
Months before the euro's 1998 introduction, he predicted doom. He said one or more of Europe's weakest countries would face rising budget deficits and economic trouble.
It would be all downhill from there. He described a death spiral with no escape. Sovereign default would follow. He hasn't changed his mind. Timing alone is uncertain.
In 2003, Alan Greenspan cut interest rates to 1%. Doing so was unprecedented since the 1930s. Connolly wasn't impressed.
He called America's economy a debt-driven Ponzi scheme. He predicted interest rates would have to fall further. He said expect it during the next cyclical downturn. He was right.
He's concerned about troubled Europe. It's one thing to bail out Greece or Ireland, he said. It's quite another to take on Spain and/or Italy.
France is most troubling. Its fundamentals are worsening. Weakened growth prospects caused it to miss its 2012 deficit reduction target. Imagine if it needs bailout help, said Connolly.
"If the Germans at some point think, 'We're going to have to bail out France, and on an ongoing, perpetual basis,' will they do it? I don't know. But that's the question that has to be answered."
EU propaganda claims lack of fiscal discipline in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy caused crisis conditions. They're aberrations, say EU officials. Not so.
Their response, said Connolly, "is focused on budgetary rules, budgetary bailouts and rules for the financial sector, with the prospect, perhaps, of (more) financial bailouts through the banking union, although that remains unclear."
Even if troubled economies were undisciplined, he added, "both the sovereign-debt crisis and the banking crisis are symptoms, not causes."
"And the underlying problem has been that there was a massive bubble generated in the world as a whole by monetary policy - but particularly in the euro zone." ECB and Bank of England policy bears full responsibility.
Trouble began when countries like Spain, Greece and Ireland joined the Eurozone.
Their interests rates immediately dropped to near-German levels. In some cases, it was from double-digit heights.
"The optimism created by these countries suddenly finding that they could have low interest rates without their currencies collapsing, which had been their previous experience, led people to think that there was a genuine rate-of-return revolution going on," said Connolly.
It was foolish thinking. "By the time the euro rolled around, money was flowing into these countries out of all proportion to the opportunities available," he added.
"And what kept the stuff flowing in was essentially the belief, 'Well, yes, there is a high rate of return in construction.' "
It depended on "ongoing expectations" about housing appreciation. It's "not dissimilar to what was happening to the United States in the middle of the last decade. But it was much bigger," Connolly explained.
"If you scale housing starts by population, then the housing boom in Spain and Ireland was something like three or four times as intense as the peak of the boom in the US. That's mind boggling."
Torrents of money drove up wages. Productivity didn't keep pace. Cheap money caused major deficit spending. In 2008, the inevitable bubble burst.
Fiscal retrenchment today requires wages and prices to adjust to their pre-bubble levels. Otherwise troubled economies won't be competitive.
One solution is massive euro depreciation. "Really massive," said Connolly. Recreating bubble conditions won't work. Doing so assures another bad ending. Potentially much worse than in 2008.
European banks remain distressed. Housing prices are weak. Lower rates haven't driven investments into troubled economies. Not like they did before.
Even if ECB policy succeeds, said Connolly, it'll only be "recreating exactly the dangerous, unsustainable situation that we had in the middle of the last decade."
Europe's last option is having Germany pay. It's not likely. At some point, angry populations may halt the dirty game.
They may take to the streets and stay there. They may demand abandoning the euro disruptively. They may keep doing it until it happens.
They may vote out political parties they despise. German reunification cost West Germany about 5% of its GDP a year.
There was no end in sight at the time. Germans tolerated because doing so reunited their country.
Comparable European solidarity doesn't exist. "There is no European demos," said Connolly, "and you're not going to create a demos by setting up a system in which you say, 'We will give you money, you will follow these rules.' "
"It simply won't work." Hard times keep getting harder. Simple solutions don't exist. Bad policies make things worse.
An eventual day of reckoning will resolve things. Perhaps it'll be more painful than ever when it arrives.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."
BANKER OCCUPATION: Waging Financial War on Humanity
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.c...sive-news-hour
DailyCensored.com – Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal NewsUkraine Dodged a Bullet - DailyCensored.com - Breaking Censored News, World, Independent, Liberal News
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The public probably little realizes the various advances in sound pictures,
but some of our troubles and problems have had an element of humor.
For example,
we experimented much in early days to prevent falling rain from sounding like dropping bullets when recorded.
We learned to 'damp' the sound with blotting paper on window sills,
or felt on the ground out of camera sight.
- Douglas Shearer
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One might think that it is an odd time to introduce a $90,000 statement loudspeaker system given the current state of the economy
and the iffy outlook for the near future.
Odd for any speaker manufacturer but Magico, that is!
For just like the Magico Mini II and the V-3 which are generally recognized as beingthe best speakers in their class,
the new Magico M-5 simply trounces every other contender in the sub $150,000 ranking of super speakers
and are just as good as --
and in ,most cases, quite a bit betterthan -- the few speakers which dare to command an even higher price tag.
High End Audio - High End Video - Sound by Singer
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Ready as this audience that's coming here to dream.
Loving every second, ev'ry moment, ev'ry scream,
I've been waiting so long to sing my song
And I've been waiting so long for this thing to come.
Yeah - I've been thinking so long I was the only one.
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